


something is not right with me

by Princex_N



Series: you may not rest now, there are monsters nearby [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, Brainweird, Delusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insecurity, Mental Health Issues, Mind Meld, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Platonic Cuddling, Psychosis, Schizo Spectrum Keith, Team as Family, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 22:11:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14174463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Keith should tell them. He knows that he should. It's not "Good Teamwork" to keep secrets. It's not Trustworthy to hide things from your friends. It's not good war-time strategy to have a pilot that's fucking insane.Keith knows this.But he can't make himself say anything about it.





	something is not right with me

**Author's Note:**

> venting? in _my_ fic writing?  
>  it's more likely than you think

"What  _did_ you do to get kicked out of the Garrison?" Lance asks. 

They're in the middle of 'Team Bonding Night', which is basically just code for 'Everyone Sits in the Common Area and Does Their Own Thing But We're Close to Each Other So It Counts' night, when Lance asks this, and Keith feels like he should have anticipated a question like this sooner. 

Instead, he's sitting on the couch, hands frozen where they had been previously cleaning his knife, quickly losing his breath as he tries to think of an answer that won't get him kicked off the team. 

Because here's the thing, Keith knew from the beginning that he was never really meant to be a part of Voltron. Allura had  _said_ that he could be the Red Paladin, but 'could be' doesn't mean 'meant to be', and Keith has been waiting for them to realize that since the beginning. Because Keith isn't  _like_ the others, and he wasn't ever going to be. 

The reason for that is about to be revealed all at once if Keith can't come up with a convincing lie in time. 

"Like, they said it was 'behavioral issues'," Lance continues, oblivious to Keith's internal struggle, "but that's super vague. And knowing you, you probably had behavioral issues from the start, so what finally did you in?" 

"I punched a commanding officer," Keith says, because apparently his mouth is running faster than his brain today. He resists the urge to clench his fist around his knife's blade to give him an excuse to get the  _fuck_ out of here before Lance can continue this line of questioning. 

"You did  _what_?" Shiro asks incredulously, which is terrific, because Shiro is possibly the last person that Keith  _wanted_ to get involved in this conversation. 

"Yeah,  _what_?" Lance echoes, sounding significantly more delighted as he sits up from where he'd been sprawled out on the floor, painting Pidge's toenails in order to lean closer into Keith's space. "Why?" 

"It was after Kerberos," Keith says haltingly, which is true. Kerberos happened, Keith had a full-scale breakdown, became convinced that the higher-ups were covering something up, beat the shit out of a commanding officer, and got kicked out of the Garrison. He just has to figure out a way to tell that story without actually telling most of it. 

Because if there's one thing Voltron doesn't need, it's a crazy pilot. They won't let him fly (just like the Garrison wouldn't have let him fly, if they had known) if they find out, so Keith can't let them know. 

"They were talking about, about, Pilot error," he continues shakily. His brain is going at a hundred miles an hour, but it's not going any good; he can't think of anything to say that sounds believable. "I knew it was bullshit. I-," 

"Ooh," Lance says, drawing the sound out around the smirk on his face. "You were defending Shiro's honor." 

Shiro chokes at the phrasing, but Keith latches onto the excuse like a drowning man. He pulls out a smug look from somewhere and aims it at Lance. "You could phrase it like that." 

Lance bursts into peals of laughter, and Keith lets himself breathe out an internal sigh of relief because that was  _way_ too close. They can't find out yet. He can't deal with that yet. 

He's so caught up in his own relief that he doesn't notice the look that Pidge is aiming his direction. 

* * *

 

Here's the thing: Keith has been like this for a really long time. 

He couldn't tell you when it started, but he's lost count of the number of houses that sent him packing because he was weird, because he talked to people who weren't there, because he accused them of things they hadn't done, all before he was finally able to drag himself out of the system and go out on his own. 

Even so, he's never told anyone about it. 

Keith knows what it's probably called, but also knows the way that people react to the word. He has a hard-enough time getting along with people already, and he doesn't need another label to make it harder. He has enough of those already. 

Still, Keith knows that his team is going to find out sooner or later. 

Part of him is surprised that they haven't found out  _already_. He's not exactly good at being subtle. There was a reason he lived out in the middle of the desert, alone (there were a lot of reasons for that, actually). 

They already make comments about some of it; about the state of his hair when he gets too scattered or skittish to stop to clean it, about his suspicion of the people they meet while traveling, about the way he used to live before, about the way he acts in the castle. They all have a lot of things to say, but Keith doesn't actually think that any of them have put the pieces together yet. 

Not even Shiro. 

In Shiro's defense, though, Keith had worked  _really_ hard to ensure that nobody at the Garrison found out about this particular glitch in his brain. Keith knows all about the medications that he would have to take, and about how the Garrison doesn't want pilots who are on medications (no matter what they're for). He would have lost his only shot if anyone had found out then. 

Things are different now, though. Now they all live together in the space spaces, they're fighting a war together, they've literally  _shared brain space_ before, and somehow,  _somehow_ , they still don't know. 

Keith should tell them. He  _knows_  that he should. It's not "Good Teamwork" to keep secrets. It's not Trustworthy to hide things from your friends. It's not good war-time strategy to have a pilot that's fucking insane.

Keith knows this. 

But he can't make himself say anything about it. 

He's not sure if he's ever going to be able to. 

* * *

Keith can't catch his breath. 

This castle is too big, they could be anywhere, they could be  _anywhere_ , he already knows that they're watching him, and they're going to find out that he  _knows_ soon. Once they realize that he knows, they're going to get pissed. If Keith doesn't figure out a place to hide where they can't find him, he's fucked. 

He can't tell if there's even a point in trying to hide. He's known that they've been tracking him for a while, but he hasn't been able to figure out  _how_. It could be his armor, his civilian clothes, his blade, his bayard, anything. 

He debates going to Coran, or Allura, about this. It's possible that they have some kind of technology that would be able to counteract theirs, or at least be able to detect where the devices  _are_ , but he can't. He isn't sure how long it's been since they've shown up at this castle, but he still doesn't quite trust them. He doesn't know them, and the information they've offered up about themselves is limited. He knows how to tell the trustworthy from the untrustworthy, and they haven't done anything to prove themselves as the former thus far. 

So, he can't go to them. He has to deal with this on his own. 

That's okay. That's how he's always dealt with this. He's used to that.

He tries to think about where he could go that wouldn't arise suspicion. The training deck is a safe bet, since that's where he goes to spend most of his time, but it's also the most heavily surveilled. Not only by them, but by Allura and Coran as well; they might have broken into the system (it's 10,000 years out of date, it's bound to be possible). They might even be working together. 

He tries to shake that thought out of his head, but doesn't have much success. 

Anyone could be working with them. 

He doesn't want to run into any of the others either, because he doesn't want to put them in danger. He can trust them, he's pretty sure, but if they're close to him when They come after him, then he's put them directly into the line of fire, and he can't do that to them. That means that the common areas, the lions' hangars, and the labs are out. 

The showers are probably a safe bet. There's only one entrance, and there aren't any windows, surveillance there is likely to be limited because there isn't much that you can  _do_ in there other than just bathe. That's fine. Keith doesn't need to _do_ anything right now, he just has to go somewhere where he can think without being watched. The showers are probably safe. They're probably okay. 

He runs past Shiro as he makes his way there, but barely notices the man's presence, much less his greeting. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. He just needs to get somewhere safe; that's all that matters. 

He curls up under the spray of the shower, hopes that maybe the tracking devices aren't waterproof, and if he winds up having a panic attack so bad that he can't stop himself from crying, then that's probably fine. 

There's probably no one around, after all. 

(The thought is ridiculous enough to make him choke on a weak sounding laugh. He can't remember the last time he was ever truly alone and unseen. He can't remember what that feels like. He's not sure he ever knew.) 

* * *

Keith wants to go home. 

He is different from the others, in that he doesn't quite have an actual  _home_ to go back to. The others have parents and friends that miss them and places that they fit in. Keith has a one-room shack in the middle of the desert. He doesn't understand what the others are talking about most of the time, when they talk about going home, but that doesn't mean that he can't understand the base of it.  

The shack was easy. It was small, and quiet, and isolated. It was in the middle of nowhere, and Keith didn't have to worry about as much there. It was quiet enough that he would  _hear_ if someone tried to get in, and was small enough that he could easily check the entire interior for cameras or mics or anything out of place when he returned after a day of being away. There were no neighbors that could be watching. 

There was energy, but no signals. Nothing broadcasted out there. He could barely even get cell service (back before it lost power and Keith never bothered to find the charger that fit, because it wasn't like anyone other than Shiro knew the number anyway), much less anything like radio or Wi-Fi. He was careful about investigating the source of the energy, because he'd  _known_ that they would want to get their hands on it if they could, and the whole 'living alone in the middle of nowhere' had helped with that.

Now he lives in the middle of a universe filled with threats, in an enormous electronic castle made to house hundreds, in a room with more square-footage than his entire old house. 

He's absolutely fucking miserable. 

* * *

Hunk is the first to notice that something is off. 

"Has anyone else suddenly gotten very paranoid about  _mirrors_ , lately?" he asks one morning over breakfast, and Keith promptly inhales a spoonful of food-goo and quietly begins choking. 

"No, but I  _have_ been too anxious to sleep lately, and when I find out which one of you fuckers is responsible for  _that_ one, I'm going to gut you," Pidge growls, pointing at everyone individually with her spoon while Keith silently tries to keep from asphyxiating. 

"Language," Shiro says, the reminder more habitual than meaningful at this point. By now, everyone knows that a sleep-deprived Pidge is completely unable to be reasoned with. "The insomnia might be mine." 

"No, it doesn't really feel like yours," Lance interrupts. "And I know what Hunk is talking about too." 

Keith is starting to wish that he'd allowed himself to die of oxygen deprivation. 

They're going to find out that it's his fault. They're going to find out what's wrong with him. And what's worse, it's started affecting them too. Keith couldn't even keep his broken brain to himself, he had to get it all over their perfectly functioning ones, because he's an idiot who can't think through the consequences of his actions. 

Not only has he been forced to start retreating to the furthest corners of the castle, utterly convinced that the others could read his mind, but now he's gone so far as to contaminate them. 

He's such a fucking idiot.

He should have never gotten into the Blue Lion on Earth, he should have never gone along with the plan to find the Red Lion, he should have told them first thing that he wasn't qualified to be a pilot, especially not a paladin of Voltron. He should have spoken up before now. He should have known better, how could  _he_ not manage to anticipate and plan for this outcome?

"Keith?" Shiro's voice cuts through the static in Keith's head, and he becomes aware of the fact that his breath is coming a little too quickly. "You good?" 

"Fine," he replies tersely, picking up the spoon again to start shoveling food into his mouth in the hopes that they'll leave him alone. 

But he can't avoid this forever. He'll have to address it sooner or later, and the longer he takes, the angrier they'll be. 

Just... not right now. 

* * *

Sometimes Keith wishes that he could go back to before.

He misses his house in the desert, but sometimes, more than that, he misses the search for the source of the energy. 

He misses having that purpose. 

He has purpose  _now_ , as a paladin of Voltron, of course, but it's not the same. There was something different in a way that he can't quite verbalize about the search in the desert. Something more  _important_. Something better. 

Fighting the Galra and defending the universe is definitely  _important_ , but Keith doesn't particularly  _enjoy_ it. He's always ready and able to fight, but he doesn't like it. He's spent too much time on the losing end of fights to ever really enjoy them, and despite what Lance seems to think, Keith isn't a particularly confrontational or violent guy. 

He's willing to fight, he just wishes that he didn't have to. 

Keith doesn't dare to  _voice_ any of these complaints, because they're petty and unimportant and it's not like he's the only one who wishes there were other options. None of them had exactly volunteered or signed up for this role, and Keith knows that it would be hypocritical of him to say anything about it, especially after the incident with Pidge. He knows better than to try that. These thoughts are his own, and they always have been. 

But that doesn't keep him from thinking about it. The others think of home, and think of their families and the futures that they have to return to, and Keith thinks of going back out to the desert, alone. Of searching out the signals that no one else sees and decoding the messages that were meant for him. 

The others will grow older and die surrounded by their families and friends, and Keith will probably die first, alone in the desert, un-found, scavenged by the local wildlife. 

The thought comforts him more than it probably should. 

* * *

Keith is curled up on the floor of the cartography room, knees pulled up to his chest, staring up at the star maps that look nothing like the one's he's familiar with, when a sudden touch to the top of his head startles him into a defensive standing position. 

He relaxes slightly when he finally registers the person standing in front of him as Lance, who's rubbing his fingers together and grimacing at them as if they've personally offended him. 

He looks up finally, to glare at Keith. "When was the last time you washed your fucking  _hair?"_ he asks. 

Keith tries to think about it, but can't actually remember. The last time he was in the shower, he thinks, was when he was hiding. He had stayed under the water for a while, but he doesn't remember using any actual soap. 

Washing his hair is not exactly high on the list of his priorities at the moment. 

Lance takes his prolonged silence as an answer (which, Keith supposes, it might as well be), and his appalled face becomes even more exaggerated. 

"This is un-fucking-acceptable," Lance says. "We're going to take care of that shit right now." 

Keith rolls his eyes, "I can wash my own hair, Lance." 

"You  _should have been_ ," Lance says, tone almost agreeing. "But you haven't, and now I don't trust you to do it, so I'm going to have to do it for you. That's how this works."

"I don't think it actually is." 

Lance waves his finger in Keith's face. "Uh-uh, which of us is the one with six younger siblings? It's me. I'm the one who knows how this works. Come on, we're going to the baths." 

Keith thinks about protesting. He's pretty sure that Lance won't actually keep pressing if he realizes that Keith's protests are genuine, but if he's being honest, he can't think of any real reason to decline. Now that it's been pointed out, Keith can feel the way the grease in his hair sticks to the side of his face and the back of his neck, and it's slowly becoming more and more intolerable. 

So, when Lance walks off, Keith follows. 

Keith doesn't spend a lot of time in the baths, because the huge pool of water makes him anxious. He doesn't know a lot about space, but the possibility of something hiding beneath the surface, waiting to drown him, has haunted him since he was a kid. 

But Lance is here, and Keith feels safer knowing that. So he doesn't protest when Lance drags him into the water and immediately starts setting out an array of bottles with explanations that Keith couldn't hope to fully understand. 

It takes three separate washes and almost thirty minutes for Lance to finally be satisfied enough with the state of Keith's hair to let him go. It's not nearly as intolerable as Keith would have initially feared, and he won't lie and say that his hair  _doesn't_ feel better by the time it's done. 

Lance can be right about some things, sometimes. Keith should probably listen to him more often. 

* * *

"Keith, you need to  _focus_ ," Allura snaps over the intercom, and Keith has to bite back a snarl of frustration in response. 

He  _knows_ that he needs to focus, he's  _trying_ to focus, it's not  _his_ fault that this shit keeps happening to him. 

This is  _why_ he shouldn't be a paladin. 

They're fighting with the gladiator robots in a simulation, and Keith is trying to keep up, but he keeps seeing flickers of shadows and motion in the corners of his eyes and turning to brace himself against an attack, only to find that there's nothing there. 

It's making him vulnerable to actual attacks, and making it easier for them to get around him to get at the others. He knows that he needs to focus on the actual robots that they're fighting, but these stupid fucking hallucinations won't  _let_ him. 

When the fighting starts up again, he tries not to let his attention waver from the bot in front of him. They're up against one, and only one, as long as he keeps his eyes on it, he won't get confused. 

But responding to an attack from behind is  _instinct_ , and Keith can't turn that off that easily. 

He twists to raise his shield against the figure behind him, and winds up getting overbalanced by the actual gladiator sweeping his legs out from underneath him. 

"Maybe we should take a break," Coran says, voice sympathetic. Keith can hear Allura's tongue click in frustration as she storms away from the controls. 

Keith deactivates his bayard and tries not to think of this as a setback, a failure, a dangerous symptom that could get him or his team killed. 

It doesn't work especially well. 

* * *

Pidge is the first one to confront him about it. 

She corners him in the hallway, practically standing on her tiptoes to poke him accusingly in the chest. " _You're_ the one all the crazy shit is coming from, right?" 

Keith flinches at the words, and averts his gaze. "I don't know what you mean," he says, but it's weak and they both know it. 

"Bull  _shit_ ," she growls. "You're the only one who hasn't been complaining about these new developments, that means that you're already used to them." He wants to point out that technically, that's a bit of a reach, but before he even thinks about opening his mouth, her glare deepens. "Tell me I'm wrong, I  _dare_ you." 

He wonders how long his paranoia has kept her awake, that she's this obviously irritated. 

He knows that this is it. The jig is  _fucking_ up. He can't hide any longer. 

Keith deflates under her stare, slumping against the wall and staring down at her despondently. "Please don't tell the others." 

She seems almost baffled. "Why?" 

Keith snorts, raising a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Cut the shit," he says harshly, because if she's going to drag this out of him, then he at least deserves the courtesy of not being condescended. "You and I  _both_ know that this makes me an incompetent pilot. I should have never been allowed in a cockpit to begin with, much less allowed to become a pillar of the only thing standing between the Galra and the destruction of the universe. I'm a liability at best, and a danger at worse." 

Pidge has been faltering the longer that Keith has been talking, and she outright flinches at his last statement. Keith forces himself to take a step back. Pidge probably  _hadn't_ been thinking about any of that when she'd come to talk to him about this. Her complaints probably began and ended with her recent lack of sleep, and he's the one snarling angrily at a kid three years younger than him. 

"I'm just, not ready for the others to know yet," he says finally, clearing his voice of the anger that was never really directed at her anyway and meeting her eyes again. "Do you mind keeping it to yourself a little longer?"

She looks him over for a long moment, and then shakes her head. "I won't tell the others," she says. "But... you know no one thinks like that, right? No one here, anyway." 

Keith mentally circumvents that statement, because she may or may not be right, but Keith can't let himself entertain the thought because that will make reality hurt worse when it finally hits. "If you tell me what's causing the paranoia, I might be able to tell you how to help it," he says instead. 

If he's the cause of all of this, then the least he can do is help the others adjust. 

* * *

"There are no bugs in space. There are no bugs in space. There are no bugs in space." 

Keith has been chanting under his breath for the last hour, and it hasn't alleviated the sensation of crawling under and over his skin at all. 

There are probably bugs in space, actually. Space bugs. There are all sorts of aliens out here, why not alien bugs. There are probably alien bugs that make their home under bigger aliens' skin, just like on earth. They're probably worse in space than they are on Earth, parasites, space seems worse than Earth. It's bigger, so that means there are more possibilities. 

This makes sense. 

There are probably bugs under his skin. 

He knows better than to try to dig them out, because it never works and the gouges from his nails raise more questions than he's willing to answer, but he has to do something. Maybe they're harmless. Mutualistic. They can eat his muscles, and maybe they'll do something for him in return. 

Actually, that doesn't sound like a particularly mutual relationship at all. It's probably not a good idea to leave them alone in there. He probably  _should_ get them out, right? Parasites can be bad shit.

One of the women who lived a few miles further into the desert than he had caught his attention as he was searching one day. She had screamed for help, and he had heard her. He was the one who drove her to the hospital. The tapeworm they'd pulled out of her intestines was nearly 14 inches long. 

These bugs are probably not tapeworms, but they are probably not any better. 

He presses the pad of his finger against the inside of his wrist, where the crawling is the worst. He doesn't  _feel_ anything under there, no curled bodies or hard shells, there's nothing moving. He can feel them in his wrist, but not in his fingers. 

That probably means it isn't real. Right? 

He debates the meaning of this, the possibility of it being a trick of the bugs, or just a trick of his mind. 

The call for dinner rings out before he can come to a conclusion. 

By the time he's started eating, the sensation has faded completely. 

* * *

"I've been trying to work out my difficulties in the training sims," Keith says. It's easier to talk when he doesn't have to look at people, so he keeps his gaze fixed on his knife as he works to clean and polish it. 

"Do you think it's been helping?" Shiro asks, and Keith shrugs. 

"Sort of?" he hazards. "I think it's hard to tell, considering, but I've been able to keep focus better sometimes." 

"Considering what?" 

Keith's breath stutters, and he wonders briefly if he's actually going to do this. Pidge already knows, it's only a matter of time before the others put the pieces together the same way she had. If he was going to talk about this with anyone, it would be Shiro, the only one on the team who has sort of the same difficulties as him. 

"It's just, not really something that goes away. I-," 

"Who are you talking to?" 

Keith turns to glance up, and sees Shiro standing in the entryway to the common area. He twists around to look back at the couch where Shiro's voice has been coming from for the past hour, and finds it empty. 

It feels like this hasn't happened in a while. Maybe that's why Keith feels so blindsided by it. 

"Just, thinking out loud," he says, a well worn excuse by now, but it works. 

Shiro doesn't question it, but Keith wonders how long that will last. 

His resolve to tell the truth has dissipated, and he doesn't speak up when Shiro leaves. 

He's pathetic. 

* * *

It's the middle of the ship's allotted sleeping time when the realization finally hits. 

Keith is curled around his jacket under the blankets, trying and failing to sleep, unable to shake the vague paranoia in the back of his head that he can't quite pin down, when it registers all at once. 

He's actually, really, technically been abducted by aliens. 

Days, weeks, months,  _years_ of sleeping under his bed, terrified out of his mind. Doing everything in his power to make himself seem less 'appealing' to them. Desperately trying to come up with ways to trick them, to make sure that they wouldn't be able to find him, to get in. All of that work, and he's the dumbass who walked straight into the ship all on his own. 

He bursts into utterly uncontrollable laughter. He can't remember the last time  _anything_ was this fucking unbelievably funny. 

Keith, for real, got abducted by aliens. He currently lives on an alien ship. He eats their food. He talks to them, frequently. 

He thinks, vindictively, of his house in the desert. Of his board of information and maps and hints and trails that he followed for months. He thinks of someone finding it, abandoned, and putting the pieces together. The crazy conspiracy theorist who suddenly vanished. That's how he's going to be known. The weird kid who grew up skittish and paranoid, only to disappear after leaving a vaguely ominous collection of ramblings behind. 

What a fucking legacy to leave. 

His hysterical laughter quickly dissolves into a panic attack, lungs expanding uselessly as his head chases itself in circles wondering if getting into the Blue Lion was a real choice, if that was something they had  _made_ him do, if Allura and Coran are  _really_ the good guys, if everything about Voltron was a lie to keep him here. If anything on this ship is real, or of it's all just a massive simulation to keep him compliant. 

He falls asleep, or maybe passes out, after a while, and when he wakes up in the morning, he resolves not to think about it. 

It's probably what they'd want, but sometimes there's only so much Keith can do to fight. 

* * *

When Hunk finds him in the training room, Keith is moments away from screaming. 

The urge has been building in his chest all day. He's been trying to force it out, vent it out through training, but it hasn't been working. It just keeps building and building until Keith has to stop the program and curl up on the floor, his whole body tense and shaking as he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and swallows convulsively around the scream threatening to force its way free. 

Hunk doesn't touch him, but Keith notices him anyway. He's noticing  _everything_ , and it's all too much. The sight of Hunk in the entryway, clearly concerned but hesitating, nearly wrenches the scream free. 

"Keith?" Hunk says, walking closer but keeping his distance. Keith wonders what he looks like, that Hunk is this tentative around him. "You okay, buddy?" 

Keith tries to nod, but his muscles spasm mid-movement and he can't finish it. What the fuck is  _wrong_ with him, why is this happening to him, why is this happening now, why why why why- 

"Keith you need to breathe," Hunk's voice says, and Keith's lungs stutter as they try to inflate, but fail. "Alright, good, try again." 

The scream starts to vibrate its way free, and Keith can barely strangle the sound into a choked moan in time. He rides the sound out as best as he can, and then tries again to breathe like a functioning human being. 

Hunk sits off to Keith's side, his presence as unobtrusive as it's going to get, as he coaches Keith through breathing until the panic attack is gone and he's left with nothing but a faint ache and a dead heavy exhaustion in his limbs. 

They sit in silence for a little while, and then Hunk speaks up again. 

"So, what was up with that?" he asks, tone too careful and worried.

Keith sighs, searches deep inside of himself for  _words_ and the ability to speak them, and says, "Nothing." 

Hunk makes a noise that is not quite a sigh and not quite a laugh. "It didn't seem like nothing," he says. 

Keith supposes he has a point. 

"Look, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Hunk says. "But, you should probably consider it. It's easier when you're not carrying it on your own, and that's what teams are for. To help you carry the load when you can't." 

It's sound advice, and Hunk is probably speaking from experience. Keith doesn't say anything, but he considers it, and that's more than he's done in years. 

Baby steps. 

* * *

There's something wrong. 

There's something wrong, but Keith doesn't know what. 

He's been laying on the floor of his room, all night, trying to figure it out. What it could be. Is it real. It is not. He doesn't know, and he can feel the frustration building in his chest the longer it takes for him to figure it out. 

He thinks, randomly, of Pidge, and it's sudden and unusual enough to make him pause. 

He was trying to figure out what was wrong, and then he thought of Pidge. 

It's a loose connection, but it's there, and now that he's acknowledged it, the certainty settles under his skin like knives and he  _has to check_ to make sure. He has to. If he doesn't, and Pidge gets hurt, then it's his fault. 

She's the youngest. The smallest. She probably doesn't need him to protect her, because she is strong, but she is small and young and should be protected anyway. 

It's not nice to make children save themselves, Keith knows this from experience. 

So he trails his way through the hallways, trying not to run because that would be Loud and the last thing he wants to do is wake anyone up. If he wakes the others up, then they'll have Questions, and Keith feels too scattered to be able to answer any of them coherently. 

He hesitates at her door, knowing that he should knock before he walks in, but not wanting the noise to wake her up if she's asleep. She's been sleeping better, recently, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to come by and Keith doesn't want to be the one to disturb it. 

But he knocks, quietly, and then when she doesn't answer, he knocks a little louder, and when she still doesn't answer after that, he decides to risk it and glance in. All he has to do is open the door a little to make sure that she's in there and that she's safe, and then he can stay outside the door to guard it, and she won't have to know that he was there at all.

The problem is that when Keith opens her door, Pidge is nowhere to be found. 

The panic is sudden and all-encompassing. She's  _not there_ he was too late and they got her. He should have been faster, he should have realized sooner, he should have done more, he should have...

He forces himself to take a mental step back. He has checked one room for her, and the fact that she's not there is not completely out of character. Pidge rarely bothers to waste time in her room if she already knows that she won't be able to sleep. If she's not in her lab, or in the Lions' hangar, when there might be cause for concern, but right now Keith doesn't have any actual proof that she's already in danger. He has to check the other places first, and then he can panic justifiably. 

Thankfully, she's in the lab, and Keith feels his breath rush out of him in a sigh of relief as she looks up from whatever it is she's been working on, looking not unlike an irritated raccoon, but here and safe and unhurt. 

"What are you doing in here?" she asks, rubbing the heel of her hand against her sternum absently, like it hurts. "It's like, the middle of the night." 

Keith fumbles for words, and the pause is too long to be normal before he finally manages to choke out, "Thought something happened to you." 

She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, and then her hand halts in its movements. "This was  _you?"_ she asks incredulously, and then rolls her eyes at herself. "Who am I kidding. Of course it was you. I'm fine. I just couldn't sleep." 

It was his fault. Again. "Sorry," he says quietly. 

Something in her gaze softens. "Don't worry about it," she says. "You can't help it." She pauses, and Keith considers excusing himself to go sit outside the door. He doesn't want to bother her more than he already has, but he doesn't think that leaving is going to alleviate the anxiety, so he's going to have to stick around somewhere. "Do you want to come sit over here?" she asks finally, hesitantly. 

Keith nods without even pausing to think about it, rubbing his knuckles against his sternum in an echo of her earlier movements as he goes, sitting beside her. 

They sit for a moment, both too still as they search for a way to make this less uncomfortable, and then finally Pidge seems to come to some decision, and before Keith knows it, he has a lap full of Pidge. 

She seems determined to not talk about it, promptly getting back to work and launching into an explanation of what she's trying to accomplish that Keith can't follow at  _all_ , but enjoys hearing anyway. After a moment of deliberation, Keith wraps his arms around her and rests his chin on the top of her head. Pidge doesn't waver in her speech at all. 

"You're going to have to tell the others eventually," she says after a while. Her voice is quiet, hesitant, like she's afraid of how he'll react. 

All Keith does is sigh. He tries to find some of the anxiety or resentment that used to boil in his chest at the thought, but can't find it. "I know," he says tiredly. It's only a matter of time. He hasn't been getting any better, and he's been getting worse at hiding it. He needs to tell them, he knows. 

He just doesn't know  _how_. 

* * *

 Everything comes to a head one day, all at once, and Keith can't find it in him to be surprised at all. 

They're in the middle of training, and Keith is doing better than he has in a while. He's focused, he's tracking what he should be, and he isn't getting distracted. 

And then the gladiator in front of him flickers, and transforms. 

It's subtle. Black sludge oozing out from its joints, its face splitting into an open maw filled with gore and sharp teeth, its eye hollowing white and focusing on  _him_ with the intensity of high voltage electricity, and Keith stumbles, falls, and screams. 

He's vaguely aware of the others gasping in shock, but all he can do is stare up at this  _thing_ that's going to kill him and devour him whole and his muscles are locked and frozen and he can  _smell_ the rot and shit of its breath in his face, he doesn't even have the breath to scream. 

And then the beast is gone, forced away and backwards, and Keith watches as Shiro's arm slices through the metal like paper, and there are hands at his back and voices in his ears, and the only thing Keith manages to do in response to  _any_ of it is press his face into his knees and wail. 

There are voices echoing around the room, in his ears, in his head, he can't figure out which are real and which aren't. They say his name, they ask if he's okay, they ask what that was, they ask what's happening, and Keith can't sort out the noise to make sense of any of it. 

He thinks this might actually be worse than after Kerberos. 

"Just get me  _the fuck right out of here_ ," he roars, finally. He doesn't want to be here anymore, where the stench of that  _thing_ still permeates the air and the thrum of panic in his lungs is threatening to suffocate him. He doesn't move from his curled up position, but there are arms on his shoulders, arms pulling him up, and he can feel their unsteady gait as they carry him out of the room. 

He digs his fingers into the crevices of Shiro's armor and manages to heave in enough air to ask, "Is this real?" 

"Yes," Shiro says with such certainty that Keith has to believe him (He shouldn't. It's not Shiro, it's a clone, a fake, an alien masquerading as his brother because it knew, it knows that Keith would go anywhere do anything to find him, but  _no_ that's not right, that's not real). 

They wind up in the common area, and Keith is terrified for a moment that Shiro is going to let him go, leave him here, alone, but all he does is sit on the couch and readjust Keith in his lap, tightening his grip around him. 

"What happened?" he asks, almost too terrified to look around, but forcing himself to. The others are nearby, on the couch, behind it, beside it, and they're all looking at him. 

"Something... happened, with the Gladiator," Lance says when no one else does. "It, like, changed? And then you freaked out." 

"Allura says it wasn't her. Wasn't one of the training sims," Pidge offers, and then leans closer to Shrio to put her hand on Keith's arm and says, "You have to tell them." 

"Tell us what?" Hunk asks, and Keith knows, he  _knows_ he has to but he can't. His thoughts fit together like mismatched puzzle pieces and his words have spiraled far out of his grasp, it's all he can do to hold himself together and keep himself from shaking apart in Shiro's arms, he can't do that and talk at the same time, he  _can't_. 

"I can," Pidge offers, and Keith nods, gasping wetly, desperately, and nods. 

"Tell us  _what_?" Shiro asks, voice firm but not angry. 

"That I'm crazy," Keith manages, and then spirals into something between hysterical laughter and agonizing sobs. He buries his face into Shiro's chest and tunes out Pidge's explanation as he tries not to cry (he's already crying. His tears are dirt and sludge and are just as disgusting as he is, but that doesn't make sense. His tears are water, normal, smearing across his cheeks and Shiro's breastplate. Gross, but no more than anyone else's.) 

"Keith," Shiro's voice and a careful jostle jolt Keith back into the present, and he forces himself back into awareness and looks up carefully into Shiro's far too sad face. "Why didn't you tell anyone?" 

"Incompetent pilot," he manages to croak, his voice ragged and weak and pathetic. "Kick me off the team." 

"Oh, Keith. We wouldn't, you have to know that," Shiro says. "If you're incompetent to fly, then so am I, you know." 

Keith shakes his head, stubbornly angry at the mere thought. "You're a good pilot," he protests. 

"So are you, man," Lance says, leaning over the back of the couch to look at Keith from over Shiro's shoulder. "Don't let it go to your head, but you're a huge part of the team. We couldn't just kick you off of it."

Hunk, Pidge, and Shrio all voice their agreements to Lance's statement, and Keith tries to breathe. It's almost unsettling to have his understanding of this situation and how it should have gone ripped out from under him so suddenly. He feels like he should be used to this. 

He probably should have known better than to trust his own perceptions of reality, after all. 

But as Keith looks up into the faces of his teammates, steady and unwavering in their words and beliefs and support, he thinks that maybe, this time, that might have been a good thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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